


The Valley of the Shadow

by BreTheWriter



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post-Star Trek: Into Darkness, Star Trek: Into Darkness Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 21:46:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BreTheWriter/pseuds/BreTheWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scotty is still being haunted by ghosts. He had no idea that Jim was still being haunted, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Valley of the Shadow

Scotty stared into the depths of his glass. It was too early for him to be drinking...or was it too late? Anyway, it was four in the morning, and the only reason this particular bar was still open was that it was not, technically, a bar--just the liquor store for the apartment complex, one of ten that was offering housing to the crew of the Enterprise while she was in drydock. Some of the crew members still had residences nearby, of course, but so many of them had actually lived onboard the ship that emergency housing had been required. 

They'd been there ten months now. Repairs were almost complete. Rumor had it that the ship had been chosen for the new program--a five-year mission. Scotty seriously hoped it was true. The idea of traveling deep space in his silver lady was a glorious one. It wasn't like there was that much on Earth that attracted him. Sometimes he even got quite excited about it. 

Right now, though, he couldn't muster up much enthusiasm about anything, except the glass in front of him and the bottle beside it and the amber liquid in both, and the promise of oblivion if he drank enough of it. 

Damned nightmares. He'd thought they would get better. Instead they seemed to be getting worse. 

"Mind if I join you, Scotty?" 

Scotty started and looked up as Jim Kirk slid into the seat next to him. Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed a bottle in one hand--looked like bourbon--and poured himself a generous glass. He raised it in Scotty's direction. "To oblivion," he muttered. 

Scotty did a double-take at the voicing of his own thoughts of a moment before. "You all righ', Jim?" he asked. 

"Yeah, yeah. Just...I dunno. Bones has been picking up shifts at the Academy--you know, just for something to do--and he's on tonight. I woke up and..." Jim shrugged, staring into his glass with the same expression Scotty himself had worn a few moments earlier. "'S too late to go looking for a fight. Figured a drink would do just as well." 

"Aye." Scotty sighed. He raised his own glass. "To dreamless sleep." 

Jim looked up sharply. "Dreamless sleep?" 

Scotty hesitated. Normally he would have kept it bottled up inside, or told his problems to the Enterprise itself. But he'd had a really bad night so far, and something about Jim seemed to say that he'd understand. So he admitted, "I've been...havin' a lot o' nightmares. Bad ones. I thought they'd get better the further away from it we got, but..." 

"Khan?" Jim said gently. 

Tears welled up in Scotty's eyes, surprising him a little. "Tha' whole encounter...I cannae get it out o' my head. _Three people_ died because o' me, Jim. That security guard, Admiral Marcus...you. All three o' ye died because o' me." 

"Scotty, no," Jim began. 

"It's true," Scotty said quietly. He looked up at Jim. "You died because I couldn't get ye out o' the decontamination chamber in time. McCoy managed t' save you, but it was still a close-run thing. My fault." He swallowed. "When we were on the Vengeance, you told me to drop Khan when we got t' the bridge, an' t' keep him down. I let myself get distracted by your conversation, an' he got the jump on me, knocked us both down, broke Dr. Marcus's leg, an' crushed Admiral Marcus's skull like a grape." His accent was broadening, as it often did when he was in the grip of deep passion or stress. "An' that guard...I let him die, Jim. I let him get sucked into space _knowin'_ what would happen tae him. I could ha' told him to hang on tae somethin'. I could ha' told him to leave. Instead I opened the door and let him die." 

He didn't mention any of the other crew members who had lost their lives when Khan had blasted the Enterprise. He held a private conviction that if he'd been onboard the Enterprise, he could have fixed the warp core _before_ it got so damaged that the only way to fix it was to have Jim climb into it, and then fewer people would have been hurt, let alone died. But he didn't say that, because he knew that Jim still felt incredibly responsible for those deaths himself. 

Jim was silent for a moment. Finally, he took a pull on his drink and looked at Scotty. "None of those was your fault, Scotty," he said softly. "You _did_ try to warn me how dangerous that climb was. I wouldn't listen. I had to do something to save the Enterprise--and the crew--so I knocked you out and went up there myself. I'm responsible for my own death." He took a deep breath. "And Admiral Marcus's death isn't your fault either. Khan's mind wasn't like anything any of us had ever come up against before. What did he call it? 'An uncivilized mind in a civilized age.' He was savage. Ruthless. He'd do anything to attain his own ends and he didn't care who or what he destroyed on the way. He honestly believed that rules and morality were for other people." 

"Bi' like ye, then," Scotty said lightly. 

He'd been trying for a joke, a way to lighten the serious mood that had settled over the two of them, but he could see from Jim's expression, the way his fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around his glass, and above all the way he suddenly went still, that he had said exactly the wrong thing. Scotty cursed inwardly. He wasn't very good with people, not like he was with machines. He knew how to deal with mechanical problems, how to talk to engines and ships, how to fix just about anything. But people? People were messy and complicated. He couldn't do but so much to fix them. And something in Jim's face told him he had just caused a major error. 

"That's one of the things that keeps me awake at night sometimes," Jim said at last, his voice barely above a whisper. 

"No," Scotty said, shaking his head. "Jim, I was joking. Ye're nothin' like Khan." 

"But I am, Scotty," Jim replied. "Christopher Pike told me once that I thought rules were for other people. He was right--I do think that way. Did. I was willing to do whatever it took to get ahead. And then I met Khan, and...it's like looking in a mirror, but the glass is warped and the lighting is off. It's just you--just your reflection--but it's a dark and twisted version of you. That's what it was like. Khan was just...me with a darker twist. Which means I do have the potential to be just like him. And that scares the hell out of me." 

Scotty contemplated taking a swig of his drink, but didn't. He didn't want Jim to think he wasn't taking this seriously. "Jim," he said at last, "ye've got three things Khan never had. Ye've got three people lookin' over your shoulder." He waited until Jim looked at him, then continued softly, "Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, an' Jim Kirk. With the three o' them on yer side, ye'll never put a foot wrong." 

The ghost of a smile flitted across Jim's face, then vanished almost immediately. "Yeah. The problem is..." He shook his head impatiently. "Never mind. We weren't talking about me. We were talking about you." 

"I think this has tae do wi' both o' us." 

Jim waved a hand and drained his glass, then poured himself another. "You've got nothing to blame yourself for. None of those deaths was your fault." 

"Tha' security guard was," Scotty pointed out. Jim hadn't offered up an excuse for that. "I cannae blame anyone else." 

Jim sighed. "Yeah, you can. Me." 

Scotty started. "What?" 

"I never should have put you in that position, Scotty." Jim raised his eyes to Scotty's. They were haunted and sorrowful. "Like you said, I _made_ you quit." 

"I was drunk when I said tha'," Scotty protested. 

"What's that old saying? Children and drunks tell the truth?" Jim shrugged. "Not that you've ever been the kind of person who believed alcohol was the only reason for honesty, but still. I wasn't thinking clearly--that's the only excuse I can give, and it's a lousy one. But I've always been the kind of guy that let my emotions overrule my reason. I _knew_ better than to use those damned torpedoes, even before I knew there were people in them. But I was...I was angry. I was hurt. I wanted to hurt Khan for what he'd done to me. When I told you to sign the paperwork, I had every intention of doing exactly what Admiral Marcus had ordered me to do--launch seventy-two torpedoes at a single man, albeit one who probably wouldn't have died even if they'd all hit him dead-on, and beat feet out of there." 

"But ye didn'," Scotty said. "Ye wen' doon there an' caugh' the bastard." 

"Yeah, I...I tried to think of what Christopher Pike would have done." Jim sighed. "But that's not the point. I pressured you into quitting. Then I called you up and dropped you into the middle of a situation I knew nothing about, on the word of a man I knew damned well to be dangerous. For all I knew I was sending you to your death. And then you wound up on that ship...you saved our lives and I made you do more. I was the one who talked you into opening that door, staying on the Vengeance when you just wanted to be ho--back on the Enterprise." He looked away. "If I was a better captain--a better person--I never would have put you in that situation. I'm sorry, Scotty. I'm so damn sorry." 

Scotty stared at Jim. _Children and drunks tell the truth._ Well, right about now, Jim qualified as both, although he had a pretty high tolerance for alcohol, from what Scotty had seen. And no doubt he was telling the truth as he saw it. Scotty saw it differently. And he noted what Jim had started to say and stopped himself. _You just wanted to be back home._ He was right. The Enterprise was more than just a ship, more than just the lady in his life. She was his home. And the crew was his family. Jim was like the crazy younger brother you wanted to drop-kick into next week most days, but whom you'd defend in a heartbeat if anyone else messed with him. McCoy was the middle brother, the one who was content to be in the background most of the time but fiercely loyal to the rest of the family. Uhura was the "fun" aunt who nevertheless knew exactly when to lay down the law and how to make it stick, too. Spock was that weird cousin that everyone pretended they weren't related to whenever they were in public, but who always--somehow--made the holidays worthwhile in the end. (He was beginning to suspect the alcohol had gotten far enough into his brain that it was carrying this simile way too far.) Sulu was a favorite nephew, and Chekov...Scotty couldn't have thought more of that boy if he'd been his own son. And for the first time, Scotty realized that the guard's life had not been lost in vain. If he hadn't opened that door, Jim would have died in space. And if Jim had died, the entire crew of the Enterprise would have died. Scotty might have lived--although that was doubtful, considering he'd committed a major act of treason and Admiral Marcus would probably have had his head on a stick--but it would have been with not one death on his head, or even three, but hundreds. Two hundred and ninety-seven, to be exact. 

"Jim," he said quietly, setting his glass aside and turning fully to face the man. "When ye asked me t' investigate those coordinates, I could ha' said no. After all, ye were no longer my captain. An' ye only asked me t' investigate. Ye never asked me tae do more. I _chose_ tae do wha' I did. An' wha's more, ye _are_ a guid captain. Take it frae me. I've been in Starfleet longer 'n any o' ye. Seen a lot o' captains. Ye're the bes'. Ye ken, I doubt even Christopher Pike would ha' done what ye did. Climbin' the warp core? Took a lot o' guts. Ye're a braw lad. An' ye saved us all." He took a deep breath. "Ye're a fine captain. An' a guid man." 

Jim's shoulders sagged. He looked up at Scotty, and there were tears in his eyes--but these were not tears of sorrow, but ones of gratitude. He smiled--a small smile, but a genuine one. "Thanks, Scotty," he said softly. "I'll have to try a lot harder to be as good a man as you are, though." 

"I've had a few more years o' practice," Scotty said lightly. 

Jim laughed and raised his glass. "To the Enterprise," he said. 

Scotty smiled, grabbed his glass, and clinked it against Jim's. For the first time, he thought he might actually sleep through the night, now that he knew what he had done--and why. "T' family an' home." 


End file.
